The Feminine Mystique

The Feminine Mystique is a book written by Betty Friedan, published in 1963.

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The Feminine Mystique came about after Betty Friedan sent a questionnaire to other women in her 1942 Smith College graduating class.

Related Topics:
1942 - Smith College

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Most women in her class indicated a general unease with their lives. Through her findings, Friedan hypothesized that women are victims of a false belief system that requires them to find identity and meaning in their lives through their husbands and children. Such a system cause women to completely lose their identity in that of their family.

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Friedan specifically locates this system among post-World War II middle-class suburban communities. She suggests that men returning from war turned to their wives for mothering. At the same time, America's post-war economic boom had led to the development of new technologies that were supposed to make household work less difficult, but that often had the result of making women's work less meaningful and valuable. It also served to disprove Freud's Theory of Penis Envy among women and freed women from being strictly confined to the role of a merely housewife during the Post-War economic expansion. Critics have argued that Friedan's analysis does not apply productively to women of other economic classes.

Related Topics:
World War II - Middle-class - Penis Envy

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